How do I describe my personal life during this time? I met funny, interesting people, I went to art galleries downtown, I performed a one-woman show for free on the street corner. Except none of that’s true. I was alone and freaked out and I stayed in my room a lot. I spent most of my time trying to find ways to occupy myself without spending money or ingesting calories.
I didn’t have any friends. Well, I didn’t know anyone. Which is the less depressing way to say I didn’t have any friends. I didn’t know how to make friends in LA. Usually when people move to a new city, it’s for school or for work. Unlike my friends who were entering college, I was not surrounded by packs of like-minded young people all equally eager to start new friendships. Unemployment and my lack of a fake ID were conspiring to turn me into a world-class recluse.
I managed to strike up a conversation with a girl in an audition waiting room once. She mentioned that she didn’t have a ride home. Frankly, she seemed a little annoying, but I was desperate for human company, so I offered to drive her. (Fingers crossed that she’s not crazy!) I immediately imagined telling people how my best friend and I might never have met if her car hadn’t broken down that morning. (Eesh. Fingers crossed that I’m not crazy.) In my car, I tried to play it cool. We made small talk; she said she’d grown up in LA, which made me doubly nervous. Then she rolled down the window, stuck her feet out, lit a cigarette, and changed the radio station. My new best friend was a real entitled bitch. I gave her my number when I dropped her off. She didn’t offer hers in return.
Some young neighbors invited me to a party they were having. When they collected five dollars from everyone for pizza I nervously told them I didn’t have any cash, but I would pay them back the next day. In the morning, I knocked on their door with my five dollars and they told me that someone had stolen the money. I assumed they suspected me. I’d been the only new person there. Did making a point to give my five dollars make me look more or less guilty? They assured me they didn’t think I’d done it. I never spoke to them again. Does including this story in my book make me look more or less guilty?
When I was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Camp, I thought I might make friends with my fellow nominees. I also thought my parents would know what the Independent Spirit Awards were, but they’ve never been good at faking enthusiasm, so that phone call was disappointing. Whatever, this was going to be great! I didn’t know how publicists or stylists worked, but I figured if you walked into a store at the Beverly Center mall and talked loudly about how you needed an outfit for a fancy award show, they’d offer you something eventually. That did not happen, but no worries, Anna, you’re substance, not style; just focus on the art. I watched all the films from my category, some of which were not easy to track down. I thought this would facilitate conversation, but it ended up making me look like a superfan. I assumed my fellow emerging artists would have done their research as well. I guess they were busy effortlessly fitting in.
I tried to keep in touch with my friends from home. People I’d known since childhood were scattered at colleges around the country, but they all seemed to be having the same euphoric experience. I would call them and feel destroyed by loneliness. It was almost comical. Me sitting on my bed (trying not to disturb my adult roommate) as someone told me how amazing everything was and their new friends called out for them in the background. They had the next four years of their lives mapped out for them, and I was pretending I didn’t see a homeless man asleep in the car next to mine.
I remember hearing somewhere that most people misremember their adolescence as entirely wonderful or (more often) entirely awful, when it was probably some combination of the two. My memory of my early time in LA suffers from this syndrome.